The runway to Runa turned out to be long and bumpy, but Red Bank’s first Peruvian restaurant is finally about to open.

Really, definitely this time, says owner Marita Lynn.

The Monmouth Street eatery, which has been “coming soon” for two years, is set to soft-open by August 30, Lynn told redbankgreen Thursday, shortly after clearing one of her final inspections by the borough.

What took so long?

“I had the wrong perception of what it takes to open a restaurant,” Lynn said, standing in the brightly painted, 44-seat BYOB-er. She calls the interim “a great learning experience and a personal journey.”

Building owner Eric Eremita in the doorway of the recently vacated bottle shop at 1 Broad Street. (Photos by Trish Russoniello. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

The ever-fluid mix of stores in downtown Red Bank continues to churn with the disappearance in recent days of Heritage Liquors from the corner of Broad and East Front Streets.

Eric Eremita, a television personality who bought the building from store owner Ktae Sun Pae last November for $700,000, says Pae “left very abruptly” about 10 days ago, taking her inventory of wine, beer and spirits with her.

To Sea Brighters and other passersby, the idea that Frances Rooney, the hardy weiner merchant who sometimes defies the pleas of her children not to go out in arctic weather, would no longer ply her trade in the elements might seem unnatural.

But with the planning board’s approval Tuesday night of a four-story, mixed-used structure on her gravel lot at Ocean Avenue and Surf Street, it may happen, she told redbankgreen.

Work is about to begin at the former Siena Grille space on Shrewsbury Avenue, according to documents filed with the borough planning office. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A vacant Red Bank building that’s been home to several well-regarded restaurants is about to get a new one – and a self-styled consultant hopes it will help him move beyond his recent infamy as a convicted felon, redbankgreen has learned.

Documents filed at borough hall identify the former Siena Grille space at 141 Shrewsbury Avenue as the future home of Blu Bistro + Bar.

Involved in the project is Russell D’Anton, who was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2010 for kickback scheme he ran as the top executive at the Charlie Brown’s chain.

Vacant for four years, the shop would get an interior and exterior sprucing up, with a raised-bed vegetable and herb garden out back. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A former West Side building at the center of a long-running controversy involving booze, noise and angry neighbors could become the home of Red Bank’s first take-out-only organic restaurant.

Plans on file with the borough planning office call for a business called Kitch Organic to take over the former home of Best Liquors, at 75 Leighton Avenue – and bring a clean-slate approach to an eyesore building with some bad karma.

Downtown bartender Dee with some of his output, including a blackbery cosmo, below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

To watch the one-named bartender Dee when the drink orders are coming in at Red Bank’s Downtown is to a witness unflappability amid a blur of glasses, garnishes, bottles and stainless-steel shakers.

“I have to be very quick,” Dee tells PieHole while rapidly muddling ingredients for a cucumber vodka mojito. Over 10 years of mixing and pouring, “I’ve developed speed,” says Dee. “Not every bartender likes to muddle, but I love the labor of this job.”

Starting August 10, the restaurant promotion group Red Bank Flavour plans to spotlight the town’s watering holes and the bartenders who keep their libations flowing with the first-ever Red Bank Cocktail Week.

Ama mixologist Beau Keegan adds a dash of grenadine to give his white peach martini the look of a peach. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Kitchens and dining rooms aren’t the only areas of restaurants caught up in the growing interest in locally sourced artisanal food products.

At Ama Ristorante in Sea Bright, the bar has become a place of labor-intensive cocktails prepared with carefully chosen fruits and flavorings, says Beau Keegan, who runs the beverage operation.

“A generation ago, it was all about liqueurs, but there’s been a revolution in the last 10 or 15 years of people making their own purees, syrups, bitters,” he says. Driven by customer interest, “everybody’s kind of pushing each other” to find new, and fresher, ingredients, he says.Read More »

New on the menu at the Raven and the Peach, Coconut Shrimp. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)

By SUSAN ERICSON

The elegant Raven and the Peach, a showplace on River Road in Fair Haven, has brought in chef Darryl Harmon to revamp its menu.

Harmon is a busy, ambitious man, splitting his time between this restaurant and several others. Chef/owner of On the Edge Events, a catering company, he’s also the executive chef at Mana Bistro in Jersey City and a “brand ambassador” for Certified Angus Beef. The American Culinary Federation has named him chef of the year, making him an award-winner, as well.

Taking a few minutes out of his busy schedule, Harmon sat down with PieHole in the upstairs Casablanca Ballroom to discuss his vision for the Raven and the Peach.

To be honest, Christina Di Iorio says, she got to the point where she didn’t want to reopen Dive, the Sea Bright restaurant and bar that she and then-fiancé Steven Graniero saw nearly wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.

Their insurance company hadn’t lived up to its obligations, she said. A vendor was suing them, and they weren’t able to get any traction with the government or private lenders to restart the Ocean Avenue business. And then there’s the hard reality of two bodies of water – the Atlantic Ocean and the Shrewsbury River – just yards away, all too ready to combine forces to once again smash the town as they did on October 29, 2012.

And yet there Di Iorio was on Tuesday, putting the final touches on a completely revamped Dive for a low-key opening at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Runa, a proposed Peruvian restaurant on Monmouth Street in Red Bank that’s been “coming soon” for two years, will open this summer, owner-chef Marita Lynn writes in a new blog post.

“I got paralyzed by fear” after realizing that “cooking is not the same as running a business, and I didn’t have the full knowledge of opening and running a business,” Lynn writes at a site called called PlanDay, but the restaurant “is going to open this summer,” she says.

Red Bank clothing store Nirvana is heading south, relocating to the space formerly occupied by McLoone’s Running Store in the Grove at Shrewsbury. A sign at the Grove says the new store will open in September. Repeated attempts to reach Nirvana owner Sunil Amatya about his plans for the 4,000-square-foot White Street building, which he owns, were unsuccessful. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

Red Bank’s Muang Thai restaurant is back in business after it was seized by the state Treasury Department over unpaid taxes last Thursday. Jack Pongnoo, owner of the East Front Street restaurant, tells redbankgreen that the shutdown resulted from a misunderstanding of how much he owed the state and when, and has now been resolved. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

Middletown resident Jon Bon Jovi, seen here at the opening of the pay-what-you-can-or-earn-your-meal JBJ Soul Kitchen in 2011, tells USA Today in an interview at the Red Bank eatery he helped create why he doesn’t wash dishes there anymore. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

In an Andean language of Peru, runa means “people.” Lynn tells PieHole that when she was in culinary school she dreamed of calling her restaurant Runa, because she enjoyed being around and cooking for people.

Now she’s depending on those people to help her get her doors opened. Lynn tells PieHole that she has simply run out of money.

This edition of Retail Churn trumpets these new arrivals to downtown Red Bank: a beach-themed home accessories boutique, a women’s workout wear shop, a hair salon and a restaurant.

Opened last month, Candy’s Cottage Coastal Living has settled on Monmouth Street after stays at two locations in Asbury Park and an extended tenancy at Pier Village in Long Branch – two cities that of course compete with Red Bank for foot traffic and consumer spending.

The garrulous and nearly-always-laughing Red Bank resident’s half of just about any conversation is likely to contain numerous such head-scratchers. In fact, Clark is quick to admit that her stream-of-conscious repartee and sense of humor can be baffling. But she adds that what’s enabled to survive more than two decades of market ups and downs isn’t what she says, but understanding what her clients say.

“As much as I talk, I listen, and try and get a feel for what they need,” she said.

Tim McLoone, below, plans to open a yet-to-be-named burger restaurant in the former Murphy Style Grille on Broad Street, above. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

By his own admission, and as his wife gently reminds him, Tim McCloone did not give it a lot of thought six weeks ago when he embarked on a plan to open a restaurant in downtown Red Bank.

Among other locations, he’s already got eateries on the boardwalks in Long Branch and Asbury Park; recently took over CJ Montana’s in Tinton Falls, rebranding it as CJ McLoone’s; and is readying new places in Hoboken and Hillsborough.

Biagio Wood-Fired Pizza has departed 12 Broad Street after less than a year and a half in town. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

This edition of Retail Churn reports on the departures from downtown Red Bank of two businesses and the cold feet of one that never opened: a pizzeria, a jewelry store and a barbecue joint, respectively.

Gone, quite abruptly, is Biagio Wood-Fired Pizza. Going, once its home of 21 years is sold, is Cesar’s Creations Jewelry. And never seen was the highly-lauded Local Smoke BBQ, which bailed over the expected costs and delays of setting up downtown.

All three involve Broad Street addresses. We’ve also got news about new boutique coming to Monmouth Street.